


Millenium

by emmaliza



Category: Nowhere Boys (TV)
Genre: Background Character Death, Backstory, Discovering Magic, Family/Sibling Relationships, Gen, fire tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 14:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3385994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmaliza/pseuds/emmaliza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Step 1 of adulthood: Pretend you know what you're doing.</p>
<p>Because Alice needs her. She needs her big sister to look after her and tell her what's going on. Everyone has their place in life, Mum always used to say, and this is hers. Looking after her little sister.</p>
<p>She holds Alice tight, lets her cry, and doesn't let go.</p>
<p>She doesn't let go for a long time."</p>
<p>Phoebe and Alice Hartley, years before Alice disappeared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Millenium

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm interested in these two and their relationship, and decided to write fic exploring it. This was vaguely inspired by what I've heard about the novelisation, but I haven't actually read the novelisation, so don't take that as canon or anything. This could be anything from 3 to 6 parts, I'm not entirely sure yet.
> 
> Rating is because in my head, Phoebe swears like a trooper when not onscreen. (That and fire, death, etc.)

**May 27 th, 1998**

 

Pheobe wakes up in the middle of the night and smells smoke. She assumes it's because her mum's making midnight snacks again and, as usual, it's not going terribly well.

 

Then she realises that, even by Melbournian standards it's too hot right now for late Autumn.

 

She throws off her covers and jumps out of bed. “Alice?” she calls. Just before she goes looking, she stops to look out the window. The fire doesn't seem to be outside. It must have started inside the house.  _ It hasn't spread too far yet, that's good. _ “Alice!” No answer. Their rooms are right next to each other and Alice usually never shuts up, reciting her poetry until three in the morning. This isn't right.

 

“Shit!” she says when she reaches for the doorknob. The metal is scalding. Her pyjama top isn't long enough that she can pull the sleeve down and use it as a barrier, so she just has to put up with it and yank the thing open. The fire's not in the hallway either. She runs forward and opens Alice's door.

 

So there's the fire. Consuming the wall where Alice keeps her pentagrams and Hot Topic slogans.  _ Thank god _ . But any relief she feels at seeing such hideous things destroyed is obliterated when she sees Alice. Alice is laying on the ground on her side, right in front of the fire. Completely unconscious.

 

“Alice!” She rushes to her sister's side, toward the fire. “Alice, Alice, come on, wake up!” She lists Alice from the ground and shakes her, slaps her a few times. _Come on, come on._ “Wake up! Alice, wake up, we need to get out of here!”

 

Alice finally stirs. “Phoebe?” she asks. “What's happening?”

 

“Fire,” Pheobe says. “Come on!”

 

Alice groans and her eyes flutter, like she's about to pass out again.  _ Did she hit her head or something? _ “Alice, stay with me!” But it's no use. There's no time for this. So she scoops under Alice's legs and picks her up, making for the door.

 

The fire's spread. Half the house seems to have caught aflame while she was in there – luckily it didn't go her way. She can barely see for all the smoke.  _ Stairs, stairs, where are the stairs. _ The stairs are on fire too. Great. There's no other way out though, and she's not willing to risk jumping from a window and killing them both. “C'mon, Alice,” she says, though it's more for herself than anything. Then she walks into the fire.

 

She can still barely see, which doesn't make walking down the stairs any easier.  _ Dying of a broken neck in a house fire would just be stupid. _ The smoke is getting to her and she hacks violently. “C'mon, c'mon, keeping moving,” she chants to herself between coughs. She keeps it up until she hears a loud  _ crash. _ Then she looks up.

 

The huge room just north of the stairs has collapsed, weighed down by all that antique furniture Dad loves.  _ Mum and Dad's room. _ But there's no time, and she looks down again at Alice's face. “We've got to go,” she tells herself, and she keeps moving.

 

Finally, she makes it to the front door – it's half burnt-out and she really only has to kick it so it falls down. She rushes forward and finally, into the cold night air.

 

Only now does she realise how  _ heavy _ Alice is, and unceremoniously drop her on the ground. Christ, she hasn't given her little sister a piggy-back since she was thirteen, and now she sees why. The strain and the smoke overwhelm her and she collapses on the ground, laying on her side facing her sister. In the distant background, she hears sirens.

 

“Alice?” she whispers, desperately hoping this hasn't all been for nothing. “Alice!”

 

For a few seconds, she fears the worst. But finally, Alice stirs again. “Phoebe?” she asks, dazed and confused.

 

Before Phoebe can begin to answer, she blacks out.

* * *

She wakes up in a hospital room. She checks the time. 3:27. Well it's not like she hasn't slept in that late before, but now she has a much better excuse than usual.

 

“Miss Hartley?” She jumps when she realises there's someone in her room. And not a doctor or nurse, either, which would be normal. A police officer.

 

She can only stare for a couple of moments. “This place must be low on staff,” she manages.

 

The policeman smiles by rote. “Police Constable Andrew Hargrave,” he says. “How are you feeling, Miss Hartley?”

 

She breaks into another fit of coughing. “Awful,” she says. “Haven't felt like this since mum found my cig–” she breaks off mid-sentence.  _ Mum. _ She remembers the room crashing. There was no time to think about it, but now... “My parents,” she says. “Are they...?”

 

Constable Hargrave sighs sympathetically. “I'm sorry to say, Miss Hartley... Your parents are dead.”

 

She nods. He probably expects her to cry. She doesn't. It's weird. She will eventually, she supposes. “And my sister?” she asks, trying to keep her thoughts to practical things.

 

“She's alright. She's with the doctors. She had some... But she's in a stable condition, she should be fine.”

 

Phoebe nods along.  _ She's safe. It's alright, she's safe. _

 

Suddenly one of the nurses comes in. “What are you doing here?!” she shouts. Phoebe's about to retort with a snarky.  _ Being injured? _ until she realises she's not the one being shouted at this time. The nurse is admonishing poor Hargrave, who looks quite scared.

 

“Sorry, I was just told to – ask a few questions–”

 

“Can't it wait? After what the poor girl's been through!” The nurse – Phoebe reads a nametag saying _Jenny_ – shoos him with her hands. “Go, wait outside if you must.”

 

Hargrave scampers away. Phoebe can't help but smirk. “So sorry about that,” says Jenny before she sets about reading monitors and adjusting Phoebe's drip. Unfortunately, she's not the type to do so while making meaningless chatter, and in the silence Phoebe's mind starts to wander.

 

_ My parents are dead. _ She knew that, of course. She knew that when the room crashed in. But she hasn't processed it and she doesn't want to process it, so she has to focus on something else.  _ Alice. Think about Alice. _ “My sister,” she says. “How is she?”

 

Nurse Jenny looks up at her. “She's fine, don't worry. She's stable. Let's focus on getting you better.”

 

_ Let's not. _ She's never been able to stand people fussing over her. “What's fine mean? Is she burnt, bruised, smoke damage, what?”

 

Jenny looks uncomfortable, like she's hesitating to say something. Phoebe furrows her brow. “What is it?”

 

I shouldn't tell you this,” mutters Jenny, before she goes ahead and does it anyway. “Your sister apparently had some unusual symptoms. You had – like you said – burns and bruises, smoke inhalation, what we'd expect. Your sister had very little of that. What she had was more like what we'd expect of heatstroke. Heat on the inside.”

 

_...Huh _ . Phoebe doesn't know what to make of that. Should she make anything of it? “But she is alright?”

 

“Yes, of course,” Jenny smiles. “She'll probably be able to see you in a couple of hours. Now just relax, rest. I'll send that cop away, don't worry.”

 

She realises that that means she'll be left alone with her own thoughts, and that's not something she's looking forward to. “No, wait,” she says a little too eagerly. “You can – send him back in.”

 

Jenny looks skeptical. “Are you sure?”

 

“Yeah. I – I want to know what happened. I want to be helpful, really.”

 

Jenny doesn't look any less dubious, but she shrugs and goes outside to talk to Constable Hargrave, lurking around and looking like a creep. He seems surprised, and steps into the room with trepidation.

 

“Miss Hartley,” he says. “You wanted to speak to me?”

 

“You want to ask me questions, right?” she asks. “Why else would you be lurking around here?”

 

He looks almost guilty about it. “...May I sit down?”

 

She shrugs. He does so. This could take awhile.

 

“You need to understand, at this point we're just trying to figure out how the fire started. No-one's under any sort of suspicion.”

 

She blinks. “Wait, why would we be under suspicion?”

 

Hargrave pauses for a moment, then shakes his head. “Right, so – did you see the fire yourself?”

 

“Well given I have burns all over me, I would think so,” she says. “Although I could barely see anything with the smoke, if I'm honest.”

 

“Did you notice the direction the fire was coming from?”

 

“I–” she struggles to remember. “Left of my room. From A–” she cuts herself off. _Alice's room._

 

“Miss Hartley?”

 

“Out in the corridor somewhere,” she says quickly. “I didn't really see. By the time I got out, it'd spread pretty far. There was smoke everywhere. I more or less just focused on running away.”

 

It doesn't really mean anything, that she saw it in Alice's room. Probably something with the wiring, could have started anywhere. God knows what cops can be like; she's not going to let them get the wrong idea about Alice just to get the damn thing swept under the rug.

 

“You did the right thing,” says Hargrave. He's trying to reassure her – about what? That she didn't stop for a second when her parents were smashed to their deaths? “Without you, your sister would...”

 

She gulps.  _ Focus. Just tell him what you know _ . “Yeah,” she says.

 

“Do you know anyone who might hold a grudge against your family, might do this sort of thing on purpose?”

 

“What? No!” she barks. “Why, is that what you've found? Some fucker set our house on fire because – what?”

 

“We just have to eliminate all possibilities,” he says comfortingly. “We don't suspect the fire was suspicious, I just have to ask the questions. Are there any smokers in your household?”

 

“Not at the moment, no.”

 

“What does that mean, exactly?”

 

She sighs. “Dad used to smoke, but hasn't for five years.”  _ Hadn't, _ she tells herself.  _ Focus, _ she tells herself. “Me, trying hard to look cool and tough at school – I've been smoking off and on since I was 15. But I haven't in five months.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

She raises an eyebrow. “What, I'm going to lie to the cops about how my parents died, just to save face?”  _ My parents died. _ Fuck, she said it out loud. It starts to sink in.  _ Dead. Deaddeaddeaddeaddead. Dead. _ Dead is dead is dead. She should be thinking something more profound than that. Instead it's just that one word, repeating over and over. Dead. She starts to shake.

 

“I'm sorry, Miss Hartley. I didn't mean to offend you. Perhaps it's better if I came back another time.”

 

She doesn't look up at him. Instead she stares at her skin. She didn't notice how burnt she got – no time, and besides, she's been trying her hardest not to notice things. She's red and sore and puffed up like a beach ball. Still, her burns seem pretty shallow. Won't even leave a scar, probably. She'll heal right as rain.

 

_ Lucky me. _

 

“Wait!” she calls out, just as Constable Hargrave is almost gone. She wipes away the tears that are just starting to come through. “What about Alice? What will you do with her? I mean–” Her voice is shaking. _Come on, hold it together._ “Where will she go?”

 

“I – I don't quite know, if I'm honest,” he says. “Presumably, she'd go live with her nearest relatives. I talked to the Inspector, apparently they're in contact with a Deborah Malone?”

 

“Aunt Debbie?” she asks. “Aunt Debbie lives in Brisbane, Alice's met her – what, twice? You can't send her that far away.”

 

“Do you have any relatives that live any nearer by?”

 

“...Well, no, but–”

 

“Look, Miss Hartley, I know this is going to be very hard, but your sister is only fourteen. She's still a child. She need a stable living situation–”

 

“She needs her family.” _I'm all she's got._ “Me and Alice, we've lived in this town since we were babies. Boring as it is, we can't live anywhere else. I know Alice, she _won't_ live anywhere else. I'm not going to just let her go.”

 

Constable Hargrave looks like he's getting sick of this all. “Well, what do you suggest Miss Hartley?”

 

“I can be her guardian. I can look after her,” she says. Hargrave stares. “What? I've got a job, I'm old enough.”

 

“You're nineteen.”

 

“Legally an adult; that's all that matters right?” she says. He just sighs at her. “Please. She's my little sister. She tries looking scary and all that with her black lipstick and pentagrams – but she's just a little girl, okay, I can make her cry if I don't like her poetry. After  _ this _ , she needs me, and I – I can't lose her now.”

 

The tears spill down her face. Wiping them away doesn't do anything. She realises that she's scared out of her wits. Her parents are dead,  _ her parents are dead _ and now she is the adult, she is the one who has to get a job and earn a living and put food on the table and all the rest of it. She can't justify moving to Brisbane to be with her sister, she wouldn't have the money for it, she highly doubts Aunt Debbie would pay, and she hates Brisbane anyway – so fucking humid. She can't justify letting go and letting Alice find her own way in life – she's fourteen fucking years old and her parents are dead, she needs someone who knows and loves her to look after her. There's only one real option, and that's that Alice stays. Alice stays with her, and she knows it's going to be hell and they'll fight like wildcats and she'll have no idea what she's doing but hey, what has every other parent in the whole of human history done?

 

Constable Hargrave sighs. “I'll talk to my superiors. I'll see what we can do.”

 

“Thanks,” she mutters. She's exhausted. She didn't notice that. All she wants is for him to fuck off so she can go back to sleep. Luckily, he's perceptive enough to pick up on this.

 

“Thank you for your time, Miss Hartley. I think that's enough for now. I'll just...”

 

He fades into the background as she rolls on her side. Maybe she manages to murmur something at him as he leaves, maybe she doesn't. It's all black again soon anyway.

 

* * *

 

The next few days pass in a haze of tears, police interviews and hospital food. She doesn't know what else she has to tell the cops. Neither do they. They don't seem to be getting any evidence on how the fire started, and keep coming back to her because – well, she's one of their two living witnesses. It's just out of frustration. They don't have another lead.

 

The people at the hospital keep saying Alice will be well enough to see her soon. They don't say when though, and it keeps making her worry something terrible will happen before she sees Alice and it drives her half-insane. In her least rational and most paranoid moments, she thinks Alice is already dead, that they may very well have killed her, or at least they're hiding the truth from her for some nefarious purpose. It doesn't take long to realise how crazy that sounds, but it doesn't really matter. She wants to see her sister and know that she's okay. Not knowing that is just fucking torture.

 

By the fourth day she's just about ready to break out of the ward and start holding the hospital at gunpoint (nevermind where she'd even get a gun in a hospital, especially after those new guns laws went through). That night though, she hears timid footsteps and there, in her her hospital dressing gown, is Alice. “Phoebe?”

 

“Alice!” And she almost dislodges something probably very important trying to jump out of bed and hug her. Alice does it for her, running to the bed and jumping on it, laying down next to her sister on a cheap, thin mattress nowhere near big enough for the two of them.

 

For a long moment, they just hold each other. Nurse Jenny was right – Alice doesn't look burnt. Just ashen-faced, shaky and scared beyond belief. She doesn't know where Phoebe's burns are, and so sometimes leans too hard on places that shouldn't be leant on – but it doesn't matter. Alice is here. Alice is here, and so what if she has to hiss in pain a little, she knows that her sister is alright.

 

Eventually, she breaks the silence. “How are you?”

 

“No better than you.”

 

She manages a laugh. Stupid question. “Where were you? I'd thought they'd have let you come see me a little earlier.”

 

Alice hesitates. “I was – really not well for a few days. Not that much damage from the fire, but – apparently I was feverish or something. They were pretty sure I'd be okay, just didn't want to let me up for a few days.”

 

“I'm so glad you're here.” She's usually no good at expressing feelings like this, but the circumstances are pretty extraordinary. “When I didn't see you – they kept telling me you were fine, and you would be  _ stunned _ the conspiracies I concocted about what evil purpose they were using you for.”

 

Alice laughs. “Never did trust anyone alive, did you?”

 

Phoebe smacks her on the shoulder. Alice glances into the distance. “So what happens now?”

 

“I – I don't know.”

 

“The house. Is it...?”

 

She shakes her head. “Burnt to the ground.”

 

“Where will we live?”

 

“I'm sure someone will let us stay for awhile. At least 'til I can get us a place of our own.”

 

Yeah, she's bullshitting flagrantly, but what is she meant to do when her sister is scared and looking to her for guidance? Alice doesn't look that reassured. “Are they going to send me away? Because they were talking about – Aunt Debbie in Brisbane–”

 

“No, now listen here,” she says, as authoritative as possible. “No-one is taking you anyway. I mean it. I'm your sister and what I say goes, and anyone who wants to get in my way is gonna be taken down with an AK-47.”

 

She expects at least a little giggle from that. Instead, Alice bursts into tears.  _ Shit _ . “Sorry,” Alice sputters, and Phoebe holds onto her for dear life.

 

“No, no, it's alright, just–” Alice buries her face in her neck and Phoebe knows she's on the edge of tears too. “None of this is your fault, alright, none of this is your fault.” She has no idea what she's doing and she just wants to ask her Mum what she does when Alice starts crying. That's not an option anymore. She's flying blind.

 

Step 1 of adulthood: Pretend you know what you're doing.

 

Because Alice  _ needs _ her. She needs her big sister to look after her and tell her what's going on.  _ Everyone has their place in life, _ Mum always used to say, and this is hers. Looking after her little sister.

 

She holds Alice tight, lets her cry, and doesn't let go.

 

She doesn't let go for a long time.

 


End file.
